[mapserver-users] simplicity

[Pericles S. Nacionales]

Puneet,

Sorry to hear all the hassles you've gone through.  By the way, did you
document all that?  It's exactly the one thing that we've all been
complaining about... but few people contribute.  And I'm as guilty as
anybody else.  

Happy Christmas, even though the war may not be over yet.

-Perry N.



On Mon, 24 Dec 2001, Puneet Kishor wrote:

> this is a (hopefully constructive) harangue... so, please keep that in mind
> before flaming me...
> 
> as you all know I have now been on this list for about 6 months now. In that
> time (that is when I first started using Mapserver) I have learned a lot
> about Mapserver, its developers, its community. One word describes them
> all... fabulous.
> 
> Now that we are past the self-back-patting, here's the harangue. Mapserver
> is just simply too difficult.
> 
> I have now successfully run it on Windoze, RH, and MacOS X. But it has been
> a pain in the arse to setup.
> 
> 1. I made a mapserver app on RH using PHP and MySQL... worked great, but the
> darn PHP was not compiled with XBase, so I had to do gyrations to get to the
> shapeindex. Of course, that is not the fault of the PHP so, but the person
> who compiled PHP on that box in the first place. 
> 
> 2. But then, I had to move the app to a Windoze box running Apache. I
> quickly learned that my app wouldn't run on Windoze because Apache was
> multi-threaded and the PHP/Mapscript.so didn't support that... had to be run
> as a CGI. I quickly tried to learn about that and decided to "screw it... I
> will rewrite it as a Perl app." 
> 
> 3. Then I learned that Perl/Mapscript doesn't work on Windoze very well
> because of problems with SWIG. So, I said "screw it" to the entire app and
> decided to make it work on my MacOS X Powerbook. 
> 
> 4. I had to first get gd to work. To make gd work, I had to compile libpng
> and libjpeg (god help me if I wanted gd to do gifs... that was another
> runaround). I got all that done when I discovered that I didn't have
> freetype in my gd. I said "screw it" (there's a pattern here, no!). 
> 
> 5. Btw, while the Mapserver site provides links to all these packages, it
> doesn't mention all the possible prerequisites, at least not conveniently. 
> 
> 6. Well, I got Mapserver to run when I discovered I hadn't configured PHP
> (well, I didn't read the configure docs properly) and that I had to
> recompile. I looked at the configure docs and was confounded with this
> statement...
> 
> --with-php=DIR          Specify directory where PHP3/PHP4 source tree is
>                           installed. Required in order to compile the
>                           PHP/MapScript module.
> 
> I am sorry, but I had no idea what the heck a "source tree" was. 
> 
> 7. Once I figured out what a "source tree" was, I found I had none. You see,
> my PB came with PHP already installed on it as part of the operating system.
> There was no source tree. Now what do I do? Muck with my already working PHP
> setup by downloading the source and recompiling it, or say "screw it" once
> again to setting up PHP. 
> 
> 8. Eventually, I did just that... downloaded the source and recompiled a
> program that is already working fine on my computer, recompiled Mapserver,
> and discoverd that I couldn't dynamically load the dl(). "screw it" again.
> 
> 9. By now I have spent more time making mapserver and its various components
> install and setup than actually creating an app with Mapserver. This not how
> it should be. 
> 
> I know it is a complicated program with many dependencies, and works on many
> different OSs, but hey, if it is difficult for the user then it is difficult
> for the user. Maybe it should come with a disclaimer... not for non-geeks!
> 
> Here's a constructive suggestion --
> 
> 1. Why not form separate teams responsible for versions on different OSs?
> All these teams can be in turn coordinated by a central, core team
> comprising SDL, DM, a few other.
> 
> 2. The discussion forums can be sub-categorized into "installation issues",
> "OS Specific Issues", "Database Issues", "Geo format problems", "Various
> flavors of Mapscript," etc.
> 
> 3. I would love to be a part of the MacOS X team. My first aim would be to
> package every conceivable component and prepare a binary that other MacOS X
> users can simply download, double-click and install. Most all MacOS X
> directory and dev tools layouts are identical, and I am sure other MacOS X
> users will appreciate not having to screw around scrounging for gd, and
> freetype, and Proj4 and gdal and libjpeg, etc. In fact, I would make the
> package ready with a crontab entry which would do garbage collection,
> require a specific temp directory (so it can successfully clean out the
> junk), and even install a working CGI, Perl, PHP application, and an
> espresso machine.
> 
> Ok, this is long enough. If you have cared to read this far, please respond
> with the knowledge that I am absolutely in awe of what Mapserver can do, and
> have one and only one aim for it and its developers... world domination and
> Nobel GIS prize.
> 
> pk/
>